We are well beyond the point where anyone can reasonably expect much from a live action adaptation of a classic piece of Disney animation. Dozens of these glorified cash grabs have been dished out over the last decade and absolutely none of them have been good enough to even justify their own creation, let alone build on the original stories. And those were the easy ones, the slam dunks. Aladdin, Mulan, The Little Mermaid. These were the slam dunks and they ended up air balls. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs came with layers of trouble when adapting for audiences nearly a century later. Snow White (2025) tries to adjust for the dated source material and ends up a disaster anyways. 

As a project this year we are taking a trip through time to revisit all of the Best Picture winners in history, Wings to Anora. You Can’t Take it With You is the eleventh film in that series, to see all the other Best Picture reviews, click here.

*Note, due to a streaming issue Best Picture #10 The Life of Emile Zola will be posted at a later date

As a project this year we are taking a trip through time to revisit all of the Best Picture winners in history, Wings to Anora. Mutiny on the Bounty is the eighth film in that series, to see all the other Best Picture reviews, click here.

As a project this year we are taking a trip through time to revisit all of the Best Picture winners in history, Wings to Wicked??? (hopefully not Wicked.(Oh god it might be Emilia Pérez, maybe Wicked isn’t so bad.(Okay so we may have dodged the Emilia Pérez bullet.)) It Happened One Night is the seventh film in that series, to see all the other Best Picture reviews, click here.

Shortly after being attacked and infected by a wild animal in the woods, Blake (Christopher Abbott) looks to console his daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth,) who was understandably shaken by the events. He apologizes, explaining that sometimes fathers try so hard to protect their children from scars that “they end up being the ones scarring them.” For the director that smartly turned The Invisible Man into a meditation on believing women, this brief moment felt like the first thread of an idea that never fully forms in Wolf Man. 

As a project this year we are taking a trip through time to revisit all of the Best Picture winners in history, Wings to Wicked??? (hopefully not Wicked.(Oh god it might be Emilia Pérez, maybe Wicked isn’t so bad.)) Cavalcade is the sixth film in that series, to see all the other Best Picture reviews, click here.

After a few delays due to the devastating fires in and around Los Angeles, the Academy finally announced their nominees for the 97th edition of the Oscars. It has been long documented, including on this site that the strikes back in 2023 meant a lot of traditional awards films were unable to be completed and released for 2024. Functionally this shifted Academy voters into a discovery mode. Perhaps nothing encapsulates this dynamic more than the 13 nominations for Emilia Pérez, a strangely paced musical about a trans cartel leader. The best picture nominations are as eclectic as ever between traditional Oscar-bait type films like A Complete Unknown or The Brutalist alongside body horror oddity The Substance and two international films in the French produced, Mexican set Emilia Pérez and Brazil’s I’m Still Here. Broadness in the nominees is, in a way, a good reflection of the lack of consensus the year’s very best have had.

As always, we will be breaking down the flashy, above the line categories: All 4 Acting categories, Directing and Best Picture. We will give an estimate of where the race stands, analyze the biggest surprises and highlight some of the most deserving films, performers and directors who missed the cut.